Last
week George Osborne converted omni-shambles into omni-rout. The
Chancellor, whose ill-devised Budget a year ago left him looking
cack-handed, vanquished his political enemies and snookered his
Coalition partners with a sure-footed statement on public
spending.Weymouth is collecting gently used, dry cleaned oilpaintingsupplies at their Weymouth store. In the process he cemented the Tories victory in the battle of ideas, and opened a new political era.
Even the prospect of the statement set Labours Ed Miliband and Ed Balls vigorously waving the white flag of surrender.
For
three years their argument has been that with interest rates so low,
Britain should borrow and spend more. Yes, the Britain which has the
highest annual budget deficit in the EU, and which (as Labour likes to
remind us) is adding to the national debt hundreds of billions of pounds
on top of what Osborne originally planned.
Labours
dreamy answer to the countrys debt problem goes down well with trade
union leaders but to the public it now seems ridiculous. Families
struggling with the mortgage, choking on yesteryears easy credit and
drowning in plastic card interest payments cannot see how additional
borrowing can make any more sense for government than it would for them.
Oppositions
usually say ridiculous things and must embarrassingly then ditch
untenable positions. Labour is right to do so now, to give it a chance
of looking sane at the General Election.
Still,
these have been hellish weeks for the shadow team. The Labour view of
the world is falling apart. Theyve pretty much accepted the Governments
policy on schools (even though Michael Goves cunning plot spells the end
of local government control and presages the destruction of trade union
power).
Worse
still for Labour, in a few months the reputation of the National Health
Service has crashed. At last, it can be seen for what it is: a final
surviving nationalised industry. Like telephones, gas and electricity
before privatisation, many of its employees are indifferent to their
customers (in this case sick people). The organisation has suffered
producer capture, the point where it is run for employees not patients.
Most
devastatingly, Labour set up a supervisory body charged by Ministers
with covering up every outrage to protect the NHSs reputation (or rather
the Governments). Anyone who squawked about dying patients was bought
off with money that might otherwise have helped dying patients. This
ultimate example of Labour spin must have left the NHSs founder Aneurin
Bevan gyrating in his tomb. Labour has nursed the NHS from cradle to
grave: once its midwife, its now killed it off.
Little
wonder that Labours not complaining about how little money the
Chancellor is giving to health. With increasing numbers of elderly
patients,We are one of the leading manufacturers of cableties in
China and with new and expensive treatments emerging every day, the
squeeze on the NHS would now be horrendous, if we didnt all know that it
had been given money to burn, certainly to waste and misuse, during
Gordon Browns baleful reign.
Labours
not squealing much about slashed police budgets either. How can it,
when we know of the services scandals from sick pay to early retirement,
from Hillsborough to Stephen Lawrence? Whats more, another ten per cent
has gone from local authority budgets with hardly a whimper from
Balls,With superior quality photometers, light meters and a number of
other iphoneheadset products. because only waste has poured out of the town halls as theyve passed through Osbornes wringer.
The
Government is shrinking the client state: that over-sized group who
work for the state, are housed by the state, or live off the state, and
who on polling day vote to expand the state.
Without
the Cabinets hatchet work, the private sector could never recover,
crowded out by vested interests and excessive taxation. Nor, indeed,A
quality paper cutter or paper endofleasecleaningsydney can make your company's presentation stand out. could the Conservatives hope to win another Election.
This
all sounds revolutionary, and it is. Britain is being turned around. In
the least promising of circumstances C with a listless economy and
soaring public debt C the Government is radically reforming schools,
universities, health, policing and welfare. It has piled in where
Thatcher feared to tread.We printers print with traceable cleaningsydney to optimize supply chain management.
Tory
backwoodsmen whinge that they have been held back by their Lib Dem
partners. The opposite is true. The Coalition has been given permission
for much more radical policies than would have been tolerated from a
Tory government, whether minority or majority. The BBC has felt neither
compelled nor authorised to wage savage war against it, as it did
against Thatcher. What right would it have to hound a Coalition that
represents 60 per cent of electors at the last Election?
If
the Tories and Lib Dems fought together theyd keep their ministerial
offices and limousines, and continue to do the right things for the UK.
But too many backbenchers in both parties yearn for Opposition,
preferring hallucinogenic ideological purity and political irrelevance
to the mucky reality of governing.
The
Lib Dems are going to look mighty silly at the Election. Which bit of
what the Government has done do you disagree with?, theyll be asked.
Theres no good answer. If they give examples, theyll be asked why they
went along with them. If there are no examples, how do they account for
ditching their partner and their achievement?
But
the Conservatives know that outside the Coalition they stand a poor
chance of winning. Theres scarcely any precedent for a governing party
increasing its share of the vote.
Thus
Labour, the guilty party whose world has collapsed and whose henchmen
are being unmasked with each new public sector scandal, may be rewarded
by being returned to office.
So
why does Osbornes statement mark an historic moment? Hes abandoning the
key flaw in democracy: that it sets politicians in competition with
each other to promise too much. Theyre then forced to borrow, passing
the bill on to the future. Thats how we have a massive debt, and how a
generation that had free university tuition, were home-owners and who
could expect a comfortable pension, has given way to one that owes money
for its fees, pays rent and has no savings.
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